so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, tech class, and everyone keeps telling me i should learn cw. i get why, the range thing and all that, but i honestly have no idea how to even begin. like do i just listen to a bunch of recordings and hope my brain figures it out? i tried downloading one app and it had me tapping along to letters but i couldnt tell if i was doing it right or if i was just fooling myself.

also not sure if i should be learning to send first or receive first, seems like everyone has a different opinion on that. my uncle who got his ticket in the 80s says just listen to a lot of QSOs but thats kind of overwhelming because everything sounds like noise to me still. any advice would be appreciated, even just pointing me toward what worked for you personally

the thing that actually made it click for me was the Koch method, specifically using a program called LCWO dot net. it's free and the idea is you start with just two characters at full speed - like 20wpm - and you don't move on until you can copy them at something like 90%. sounds weird to start fast but it stops you from counting dits and dahs which is the trap everyone falls into. if you count dits you'll hit a wall around 10wpm and it becomes almost impossible to get faster because your brain learned the wrong thing.

dont worry about sending at all yet honestly. receiving is the whole game when you're starting. once you can copy in your head the sending part comes pretty natural. i'd say give yourself like 10-15 minutes a day every single day rather than doing an hour once a week, consistency is everything with this stuff. it took me about 4 months before i had a real QSO and it was rough but it worked

yeah what he said about LCWO is good. i'll add that i also used the Morse Code Ninja stuff on youtube, the guy has these practice videos at different speeds and i'd just let them run while i was doing dishes or whatever. probably not the most efficient but i think it helped with just getting the sounds into my head passively. some people swear by that approach some people say it does nothing, who knows.

one thing that realy helped me was finding a local club that still does a CW net, just listening even when i couldnt copy anything felt useful eventually. takes forever though, not gonna lie